Woodbury County is the latest to address the issue of data centers as the supervisors there unanimously voted for a one-year moratorium on the facilities.
The vote is a response to the town of Salix annexing 900 acres of farmland in April with MidAmerican Energy actively seeking a customer build and operate a data center there. Supervisor Matthew Ung says both Plymouth and Sioux County in northwest Iowa also recently passed similar measures so they can come up with rules and regulations. “So even though this isn’t about Salix and it can’t affect incorporated areas of cities, all three counties are passing moratoriums in response to what one city did,” Ung says. The mayor of Salix says he has no comment on the moratorium, but previously said the community followed the law.
Steve Corey, who lives nearby and says the project should be built in an industrial area instead. “This is agricultural land. This is a small community, and the people that live down there really do live there for that reason,” he says. “And the people who are going to be most impacted, where it’s going to be built literally right across the road from them. There’s no recovery from that for them.”
Dean Bradham is a member of the local Plumber and Steamfitters union says blocking a data center will make the county miss out on tax money and progress. “This is opportunity, this is the future, and I’m gonna tell you what, we can either be on the train or we can be left behind and it just feels like Woodbury is just so quick to jump on the train to block any good thing that happens around here. We need to look at going itno the future with this stuff.” State Senator Kevin Alons told the supervisors there’s been a lack of transparency and MidAmerican hasn’t answered questions about the size and scope of the project.
Around 300 people turned out last night to voice their thoughts as Dubuque County held its first public hearing on a data center ordinance. Dubuque County passed a moratorium on data centers to give it time to come up with the ordinance. The City of Ames in central Iowa had an information session last night for a proposed data center at the city’s airport.
